Long White Beard
by Mnemosyne77
Summary: After a thousand years, Merlin contemplates the reality of his beard


**A/N Inspired by the final scene of the series. Mostly I'm just trying to get back into writing again. Please review.**

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**Long White Beard**

In the time before, the long white beard had meant wisdom. Because of that, it had become both his greatest advantage and his greatest disguise. Talk and the long white beard ensured you were listened to. Be silent and the long white beard ensured no one noticed you at all. That's why it was the form he'd chosen, after all. A perfect disguise. And he'd felt too much fear not to use one. Even at the end.

Like most affectations, it drew its meaning – its form - from the most subtle symbolism. Only men grew beards and a long one took years to grow. To survive so long that the hair on your chin spilled down to your chest and turned white meant you had the skill to not die in a world where death was everywhere: a constant and frightening reality terrifying in its arbitrary callousness.

Everything you needed to know about the world he'd been born into was encompassed in that one simple sign of wisdom. His long white beard.

Later, as wealth grew but the world remained otherwise unchanged, it was fat that came into fashion as it had in a China that gave the world a jovial, jowled Buddha; his broad smile and rolls of cellulite a sign as much of prosperity as it was of knowledge. Fat merchants wobbled through the cobblestoned streets sending leaner adventurers to distant lands while those who reminded him of his real self – lean, quick, hungry and impudent – danced on the edge of trouble as he always had.

When the world discovered that powerful tool, that method of acquiring knowledge they called science, wisdom and wealth did not part ways any more than it had when the world was filled with warring city states and a man who lived past fifty was admired simply for existing. Wisdom may have become the eccentric third son, the lawyer, the cleric or the old fussy gentleman ensconced on his estates with strange smells and arcane symbols on paper strewn across his mahogany world but the true acquisition of knowledge took time and time took money.

Wisdom may have become pale and sunken-eyed, socially-inept and vaguely consumptive but it was still waistcoated and convinced of its inherent superiority. When Newton spoke, he expected to be listened to as much as Dante or Caesar or Pope Innocent II. And despite the Margaret Cavendish's and Maria Curie's of history, he knew the world had not really changed. The symbols had twisted 90 degrees but they were still, ultimately, judging wisdom by a long white beard. And after a thousand years, he'd grown somewhat attached to his.

It was hard for him to say why he'd kept it all these years. He liked to think it was nostalgia or a statement on the rapidly evolving yet completely unchanging world that spun around him. But sometimes he wondered if it wasn't a taste of the old fear. The fear of being recognised. The fear of someone _seeing_. Anonymity after a while was an addiction. Glide through the world for a while and you get used to being invisible.

So maybe it was fear. The same fear. The fear that tied him up in knots for all those years and caused him to make so many mistakes in the name of sheer childish cowardice. If the great Merlin was some old white guy in tattered robes and wisdom streaming down his chin like grease from an over-abundant feast then Merlin could be anybody. Or nobody. Both him and not him. The servant and the master. The young and the old. Everyone and no one.

In the world around him he saw that wisdom – true wisdom - was now portrayed as skinny and autistic with a kind of bright, chittering enthusiasm that reminded him of his younger self. Of who he was before he let fear tie him up in knots of lies and anonymity and deceit.

When he turned on the television, flicking through the channels like he had once flicked through inane alchemy tests looking for rare nuggets of truth, he saw men like Hawking. And he saw some mad Mullah still living in 1152 screeching at a crowd because the world failed to acknowledge the link between his wisdom and his long white beard. He was everyone and no one. He was halfway to insane. Would he become that madman? A man screeching in his own mind to be listened to when he has earned the mark of wisdom by the sheer luck of being male and failing to die?

Magic was gone. The Gods were dead. Wisdom may still be all privilege and misogynism but there was now a chink: a crack that men and women like himself could step through if the courage could be found. Courage. That one thing that a thousand years and the tear-soaked memory of tragedy could never conjure up no matter how hard he'd tried.

He needed to face his fears. His failures. The reality of himself as he was and had been for all those long years.

The world always needed wisdom. It was time to finally have the courage to acquire some.

It was time for him to shave off that long white beard.


End file.
